LBRY is Awesome

I've been using LBRY for a while now and it's made amazing proress in the last couple years in terms of the user experience both of the desktop app (which I use on linux), the android app, and of course lbry.tv which is how most people first experience lbry. If you haven't heard of LBRY or don't know what it is, I recommend you read their answer, but in a nutshell it's both a protocol for sharing files (not just videos, that's just what most use it for) in a decentralized way and also the open source applications built by the company to access those files on the network.

The reason I'm talking about it (besides the fact that it's awesome and I want it to continue to grow and want more creators to post to it in addition, or even instead of Youtube), is that I've been experimenting with posting blog posts there. Their markdown syntax is slightly different than the python library I use to generate my static site and it renders a little differently (most annoyingly paragraphs have to be all on one line, at least in the desktop app, the result looks better on lbry.tv) but it's worth the minor changes to get the automatic handling of light and dark modes. If I posted a raw html file one or the other would not look good since there's no way to detect the mode and change css dynamically afaik.

Eventually, I may even start posting videos or other content on LBRY, but for now I'll just try to mirror blog posts and maybe some project READMEs.

New Year's Resolutions 2020

So it's that time of year again and I figured I'd publicly join in and hope that helps keep me honest. I've split the goals into Primary and Secondary. Secondary is a catchall for things that would be cool but I'm not super motivated to do and for things that I'll do naturally and really shouldn't count (like reading fiction).

Primary

1. Get in running shape, run 2-4x/week, bike ~1x/week
2. Calisthenics 3x/week, weight lifting ~1/week
3. Program 20+ hours a week (not counting paid work)
4. Update website at least once a week (not necessarily a blog post)
5. Continue to learn SQL and Scheme/Racket, use in/for several projects and possible paid work
6. #ProjectEuler100 Challenge

Secondary

1. Learn and do some projects in Rust and Javascript
2. Finish at least 12 fiction books
3. Finish 12 non-fiction books
4. Get 500+ stars on one of my Github repos
5. Get a project into the Debian repos (and maybe the AUR?)

Obviously some are very broad, there's some overlap and there are a lot more specific goals I have that will be covered/accomplished through say Primary 1-3.

This is kind of the whole Systems vs. Goals thing that Scott Adams and others have been on for several years. I think it's a false dichotomy; a system is a goal and most goals are systems. More than that, there's a chain for large, long term goals. For example, say my goal is to run a marathon. I'd start a year before the race with a plan to run 4-5 times a week working in a speed every other week. I'd do 5Ks, then 10Ks, and finally half-marathons every other month. Those are all systems, or (sub)goals in their own right. Even finer grained, I'd have systems for sleeping and eating right in service of those systems/goals. Basically until you get down to things that can be accomplished in a day or 2, every goal has systems. Even something done in a weekend like a game jam benefitted from goals and systems that came before (learning the tools, general experience and prior game jams) and you might have your diet and sleep specifically calibrated for a 48-72 hour develoment marathon as another system.

Sorry, that was a tangent, but it's always bothered me the whole Systems > Goals. It's just semantics and perception.